Month: April, 2011

by Robinson

Overcoming Obstacles to Success in the Science Classroom

Students with identified disabilities are found in science classrooms in every school in the nation. What specific techniques benefit special education students in the science classroom? Strategies designed to increase classroom success for special education students are based on sound instructional methodology, and thus have potential benefits for all students.

When integrating the strategies suggested, teachers must remember that the term “special education” is applied to students having a wide range of disabilities existing on a continuum from moderate to extreme. Instructors should consider individual needs and learning preferences when implementing strategies.

by Scott Smith

There is massive difference between helping someone *feel* or *appear* awesome and helping them actually *be* more awesome.

And in real games and sports and any activity one does for work but can also do WITH PASSION, this matters. What you call *gamification* is what we consider a potentially useful toolkit (especially feedback, crucial for any Improvement) in service of a greater goal… And that greater goal involves real challenges and real skill/knowledge to meet the ever increasing challenge. To apply the mechanics typically used as a form of meaningful feedback for improvement (and yes, sometimes motivation… When done carefully), while removing the heart/soul/core of the user experience… That is the sad part.

Your example of rewarding someone for BUYING books, vs. what is actually potentially beautiful and deeply engaging about reading/using books. That is sad. If you had suggested some form of gamification as a band-aid or bridge to bootstrap people into an experience or behavior, and then quickly shift them to what is truly potentially motivating for its own sake (like getting people to try snowboarding the first few times… The beer may be what gets them there, but the feeling of flying through fresh powder is what sustains it, but only if we quit making it Just About The Beer and frickin teach them to fly).

by Scott Smith

It’s such a funny thing. Threats–like hurricanes and rectal exams–are only scary until they arrive. Once they’re over, they’re just the basis for funny stories. But, you do nearly always survive them. And, if you didn’t survive? It wasn’t because of a lack of fear. Like I say, the universe doesn’t particularly care whether you’re scared.

by Scott Smith

Mr. Kahn was a man of enormous warmth and personal charm. But he was also mindful of the constraints imposed by market forces. When I began teaching at Cornell in 1972, he was dean of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences. A story circulating at the time described an English professor’s complaint to him about the high salaries of economics professors. “Perhaps you should consider starting an English consulting firm,” he is said to have responded.

by Robinson

A nice post on keeping chickens for meat (and, be warned, some detailed information on the harvesting process). I discovered Irene Kightly on Flickr and find her and her property in France to be quite an inspiration.

by Scott Smith

Solomon believes that the key to Jump’s effectiveness is the way it “breaks math down to its component parts and builds it back up.” And she notes that this “flies in the face of the way math is typically taught.

by Robinson

I’ve been doing some reading on glyphosate and creating buffers against it’s use on adjoining properties. I’m going to have to do some rethinking on additions of fruit trees on the north edge of our property. The glyphosate use on the field to our north is likely the reason that we haven’t had any plum jam since that field went from being fallow to being farmed.